The UNFCCC: A Necessary Ideal

Chapter 2 showed that there is reasonable disagreement over some of the ends that the UNFCCC should bring about. In Chap. 3, I argued that when there is reasonable disagreement over such ends, and when there is a pressing need to reach agreement amongst a collective group, procedural values become additionally important in the UNFCCC. In Chaps. 4, 5, 6, and 7, I then introduced several principles of procedural fairness and showed what measures are needed in order to translate these principles in the decision-making processes of the UNFCCC. During these chapters, I also drew attention to the fact that procedural fairness sometimes conflicts with other goals by introducing procedural obstacles that can prohibit agreement. Most importantly I drew attention to the fact that, whilst procedural fairness requires the representation of all affected actors, incorporating a sufficient diversity of actors into decisions to meet this requirement can lead to procedural difficulties. In addition to this, the arguments that I’ve presented so far have been based on an assumption that the UNFCCC is a comprehensive agreement that aims for the universal membership of states on a global scale.

In light of the possible procedural trade-offs associated with fair procedures, it’s worth relaxing this assumption in order to consider whether fair procedures are still important for climate change institutions that have limited, rather than comprehensive membership. That is, in this chapter, I consider the role that multilateral agreements outside of the UNFCCC can play in addressing climate change. The current debate over the proper function and future of the UNFCCC makes this undertaking extremely relevant. Several authors have criticised the UNFCCC’s comprehensive approach, arguing that there are too many divergent interests among its participants for it to bring about meaningful action on climate change. These authors argue that it might be better to focus efforts to address climate change in other areas instead. A cooperative arrangement amongst a small group of likeminded actors might be a much more conducive forum for achieving meaningful action on climate mitigation. Such proposals appear increasingly desirable in light of the pressing need to address climate change and the lack of action in the UNFCCC so far.

Contrary to these claims, I ultimately argue that international efforts to address climate change should remain under the remit of the UNFCCC. This is because addressing climate change requires sustained action on a global scale. This, in turn, requires global support from a very wide range of actors, which is dependent on a procedurally fair agreement. I argue that, by virtue of its comprehensive membership and inclusiveness, the UNFCCC is the only forum that can provide adequately fair representation and participation in its decision-making processes. Therefore, the UNFCCC is the only suitable forum for addressing climate change at the global level. As such, contrary to many existing arguments on this matter, I argue that international efforts to address climate change should continue to operate primarily through the UNFCCC. At the same time, I argue that different multilateral approaches to climate change are not mutually exclusive, and that minilateral agreements can contribute to solving the problem provided they operate in line with the principles and outcomes of the UNFCCC.

In summary, I make five central claims in this chapter.

In Chap. 3, I argued that the ultimate goal of the UNFCCC is to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at a level that avoids causing dangerous climate change. Further, I suggested that there is a general understanding that meeting this goal requires limiting the increase in global temperature to no more than 2 °C above preindustrial levels. This threshold is important because a global temperature increase beyond this level is associated with extremely bad outcomes. It is thought that exceeding this level may produce potential feedback effects or exceed tipping points that bring about irreversible changes to the climate. Given the broad support for the 2 °C target, as well as the negative effects associated with a temperature increase beyond this level, it seems reasonable to suggest that this target should be used as a overall gauge for the effectiveness and desirability of global efforts to address climate change.

The problem is that meeting the demands of procedural fairness can be extremely costly for other important ends, including the ability of an institution to avoid dangerous climate change. That is, procedural fairness sometimes puts constraints on a group’s ability to make meaningful decisions, and to do so quickly. Given the importance of urgency, this is very important for avoiding dangerous climate change. If the members of a multilateral group are unable to take meaningful action quickly then they will fail to adequately address climate change. Given that this book has proposed several measures for achieving procedural fairness in the UNFCCC, it’s worth considering whether these measures should be overlooked for the sake of urgency. For this reason, the rest of this section sets out some of the potential trade-offs that arise with fair procedures. The subsequent section then considers whether these trade-offs warrant a multilateral approach that forgoes procedural fairness for the sake of more immediate action.

It’s easiest to see how procedural fairness can conflict with other ends by considering some of the requirements for fair participation that I outlined in Chap. 4. This chapter suggested that, according to fairness, the UNFCCC should incorporate a large number of participants in its decision-making processes, so that all those who are affected by climate change are represented in its decisions. At the same time, incorporating enough actors into a decision-making process to meet this requirement is difficult on a practical level. Bringing more voices into a debate means that decisions can take longer, are more complicated, and are more susceptible to obstruction from uncooperative actors. This means that, generally speaking, including more actors in a decision prohibits a group’s ability to reach agreement and make decisions quickly.

But beyond its implications for urgency, there are also other reasons for thinking that procedural fairness may impede action on climate change. For example, in Chap. 4, I also argued that procedural fairness requires taking into account the views and judgements of a diversity of stakeholders in a decision. But accommodating the interests of all relevant actors can bring about an outcome that is less stringent than one that does not. It might be that some actors are incapable of realising what their best interests are, or that their decisions are dominated by short-term views. If people are poor decision-makers, or if there is wide disagreement about the correct course of action needed to avoid dangerous climate change, then accommodating all of these views and judgements in a decision may be detrimental to reaching the ultimate outcome that we want. This implies that accommodating procedural fairness may bring about less concerted action on climate change. This is a much heard argument in the literature on environmental democracy, where there are frequent claims that democratic decisions are not necessarily those that promote the most desirable environmental ends.¹

If procedural fairness wasn’t important, then an expert group could make these decisions, or decision-makers could exclude those whose opinions do not bring about the most desirable outcome. But doing this goes against the requirements for procedural fairness set out in the earlier parts of this book, which imply that actors should endeavour to treat other reasonable actors in a reasonable way, seeking to find mutually acceptable fair terms of cooperation. Provided that each actor meets the conditions of reasonableness that I set out in Chap. 2, actors should treat each other’s views with respect, even when they think that a particular view is wrong. But the point is that accommodating each actor’s views and opinions may prevent the overall group from taking more stringent action on climate change. One might argue that if a group knows that it should take a certain course of action (for example, preventing dangerous climate change), then it should push ahead with this goal rather than let itself get bogged down in an attempt to accommodate the interests of many different actors. This presents a second potential trade-off between procedural fairness and the overall goal of avoiding dangerous climate change.

A third trade-off occurs when decision-makers are poorly representative of those that they act on behalf of. Earlier in this book, I argued that certain actors have the right to participate in the decisions of the UNFCCC by virtue of their democratic mandate. That is to say, procedural fairness means that decision-makers should participate in decisions on behalf those that they are appointed to represent. These actors gain their legitimacy at least partly because they represent some constituency. Procedural fairness therefore also requires that these actors accurately represent those that they claim to act on behalf of. As I argued in Chap. 7, this means that if a state delegation is wholly unrepresentative of its domestic population in the UNFCCC then it might be worth excluding that actor from the UNFCCC’s decisions. After all, a state gains its legitimacy as a decision-maker in the UNFCCC in part because it acts on behalf of those who have a right to participate in the decision and if it isn’t acting on behalf of these actors, then it is worth questioning its place in the decision-making process.

But a problem arises if a large emitting state is wholly unrepresentative of those that it has a right to participate on behalf of. State accountability can be very weak at the multilateral level and it’s not too difficult to imagine situations where a member state delegation participates in the decisions of the UNFCCC in a way that is contrary to the best interests of those that it is supposed to act on behalf of. In this case, procedural fairness may require the exclusion of that state from the decision-making process. But successfully avoiding dangerous climate change depends on reducing the emissions of all major emitting states. Assuming that any state that is excluded from an institution’s decisions is unlikely to comply with any subsequent institutional commitments, this means that there is a third trade-off between the requirements of procedural fairness and successfully avoiding dangerous climate change. This arises because procedural fairness requires the exclusion of some states even when including these states is necessary for avoiding dangerous climate change.

The account of the potential trade-offs that could arise in the UNFCCC between fairness and effectiveness is not exhaustive and there may be many other cases where creating an institution which is procedurally fair agreement is detrimental to the achievement of other ends. But the account that I’ve given here clearly demonstrates that there are likely to be instances where procedural fairness conflicts with other ends. Given the severity of climate change, any account of procedural fairness in the UNFCCC needs to take this problem into account. That is, it is necessary to consider whether procedural fairness can be given up for the sake of more pressing ends.

In Chap. 3, I argued that this was not a feasible option in the UNFCCC on account of the fact that procedural fairness is a necessary criterion for avoiding dangerous climate change when there is reasonable disagreement about how this should be done. This argument is based on an assumption that the UNFCCC has comprehensive membership, and that it is necessary to reach an agreement that is sufficiently acceptable to all of the states of the world. In light of the trade-offs that can arise through trying to incorporate all of these actors in a multilateral agreement, it is time to relax this assumption. That is, it is worthwhile considering whether the ineffectiveness of the UNFCCC so far warrants taking an approach amongst a limited number of actors. The next section describes what such an approach would look like and explains how it might achieve more effective action on climate change.

Traditional arguments for avoiding dangerous climate change maintain that climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution. Emissions are created by actions on a global scale and any reductions in emissions in one part of the world can be undone by emissions elsewhere. This means that climate change mitigation is a global public good. In fact, if several states decide to take action on climate change without the cooperation of others, then those who are outside of the agreement may have an incentive to increase their emissions, freeriding on the mitigation efforts of others (Barrett and Stavins 2003, p. 358). This means that avoiding dangerous climate change requires the participation of a very large number of actors, if not a wholly global approach.

But the lack of progress associated with the comprehensive approach of the UNFCCC has led many to question this assumption. Whilst climate change is caused by the actions of agents on a global scale, a large proportion of global emissions is caused by only a small handful of states. It’s therefore theoretically possible to achieve significant emissions reductions amongst only a small subgroup of actors. One might argue that all that’s needed to bring about large reductions in global emissions is the cooperation of those states that are emitting a lot now.² An exclusive agreement amongst a small number of likeminded states would not face the same procedural problems suffered in the UNFCCC.

In light of the many procedural problems that beset the UNFCCC, several authors have started to consider whether multilateral arrangements with only partial membership might bring about more meaningful action on climate change. This was something first proposed by Moses Naim, and subsequently discussed by Robyn Eckersley and Weischer et al. (Naím 2009; Eckersley 2012; Weischer et al. 2012). These agreements represent ‘minilateral’ arrangements or ‘clubs’ of small groups of likeminded states that seek to implement cooperative action on climate change. These represent pragmatic responses to climate change, which are more politically feasible than the overambitious approach of the UNFCCC and may be better suited to achieving action on climate change (Eckersley 2012). By limiting participation to only a small number of key actors, these exclusive institutions may avoid some of the procedural problems of reaching agreement in a large group, even if they exclude those who have a right to participate as a matter of fairness. As a result, some have suggested that this sort of pragmatic approach is more likely achieve action on climate change, rather than comprehensive, binding agreements (Victor 2001, 2010; Prins and Rayner 2007; Levi and Michonski 2010).

It’s worth noting that some authors also consider similar agreements that involve both state and non-state actors.³ Others note that there are also many bilateral laws and arrangements that coordinate climate policies between two countries (Levi and Michonski 2010). There are also many instances where action on climate change is sought at the sub-state level (The World Mayors and Local Governments Climate Protection Agreement 2012). Further, many authors also argue that action on climate change has become ‘fragmented’, incorporating a large number of different actors and operating through many diverse processes (Biermann et al. 2010, p. 287; Biermann et al. 2012).

Whilst this literature is important, this chapter is primarily concerned with state-based multilateralism that attempts to coordinate sufficient action to address global climate change. This is partly because it seems likely that implementing sufficient efforts to successfully avoiding dangerous climate change will depend on a level of coordination which is only possible through a state based approach at the global level.⁴ Smaller institutional arraignments may play an important role in contributing to this end, but are insufficient by themselves. Further, Given that multilateral negotiations have taken place over the past two decades, any proposal for institutional reform must take the existing institutional framework into account, because many political constraints arise due to the historical contingency associated with the previous negotiations. This is not to say that broader arrangements outside state-based multilateralism are unimportant, nor is it to prioritise multilateralism in any way. In this chapter, I simply assume that state-based multilateralism is very likely to play a major role in addressing climate change in the immediate future.

Climate minilateralism isn’t just a matter of academic debate; it’s also something that’s seen in practice. In light of the lack of progress in the UNFCCC, many alternative multilateral arrangements now exist to coordinate cooperative action on climate change.⁵ Perhaps the most notable of these agreements is the Major Economies Forum on Climate Change and Energy (MEF), which facilitates dialogue on climate change among 17 of the world’s largest emitters.⁶ Other initiatives operate on regional scales, such as the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum, the Global Climate Change Alliance (GCCA), and the US Major Emitters Initiative.⁷ Many of these agreements cover a multitude of policy areas, whereas others have more limited mandates. For example, the Climate and Clean Air Coalition is a global movement to reduce emissions of specific greenhouse gases known as ‘short lived climate pollutants’ and doesn’t address other issues of climate change.⁸ Action on climate change is also being pursued in small multilateral groups that traditionally have much broader mandates, such as: the Group of Eight Industrialised Countries (G8) and the Group of Twenty (G20). Given that the G8 and G20 members contribute to a large proportion of global emissions, many decisions within these institutions have direct, and indirect implications for climate change.

It’s clear that, whilst there has been little meaningful action under the UNFCCC, action on climate change is being pursued in other multilateral arrangements. From the perspective of climate change, the primary appeal of these institutions and agreements is that they allow likeminded actors to take action on specific issues without having to reach agreement in the UNFCCC. To be sure, there’s no certainty that these approaches will implement sufficient action to avoid the very worst consequences of climate change. There may still be reasonable disagreement within these smaller groups of actors. Several studies show that unilateral measures are inadequate to prevent dangerous climate change (IEA 2011; Rogelj et al. 2011; UNEP 2013), and there is no promise that there will be effective agreement among a small subgroup of nations.⁹ Moreover, even if there is agreement amongst a select group of key states, there is no guarantee that minilateralism can bring about the necessary changes to address climate change.¹⁰

At the same time, comprehensive approach of the UNFCCC fares little better. It’s well documented that the voluntary pledges that states have made in the UNFCCC so far are inadequate for avoiding dangerous climate change (UNEP 2013). The possibility that more exclusive multilateral agreements can avoid some of the problems of the UNFCCC makes it worthwhile to explore these approaches.

It’s worth noting that not all those who advocate these minilateral agreements are in favour of giving up on the UNFCCC. These institutions are not mutually exclusive, and addressing climate change may require a combination of initiatives. But there are at least some who suggest that the UNFCCC is a redundant institution that uses up political resources that could be better used elsewhere (Naím 2009; Prins et al. 2010). Given these arguments it is worth considering whether the discussion so far can throw any light on the merit of continuing to support action in the UNFCCC.

Contrary to these claims, I propose that the UNFCCC is the only suitable forum for addressing climate change. I do this in three steps. First, I argue that any efforts to adequately address climate change will require action on a long term and sustained basis. Second, I argue that there are good reasons for supporting a comprehensive approach to multilateral action on climate change on the basis of efficiency. This, in turn, requires public support for an institutional arrangement on a global scale. Third, I argue that, on account of the fact that it is the only forum on climate change that seeks the representation of actors on a global scale, the UNFCCC is the only appropriate venue for achieving these goals. This is not to say that the UNFCCC is currently globally representative in this respect; many reforms may be necessary to meet the standards set out in Chaps. 4, 5, 6, and 7. But the UNFCCC is currently the only forum that has universal membership of all actors at the global level and seeks to accommodate principles of fairness in its decisions. In light of this, I now explain why a sustained and comprehensive approach to climate change is needed.

In addition to requiring urgency, avoiding dangerous climate change also requires long-term, sustained action. It is therefore important to think about how cooperation can be sustained in the long run whilst also achieving immediate action now. There are at least two points that support the view that sustained action is important.¹¹

A further reason for sustained action is that it may take a very long time to implement the necessary mitigation measures needed to address climate change. Carbon emissions have become a fundamental part of almost every aspect of society. It is generally thought that reducing global emissions enough to avoid the very worst effects of climate change requires large-scale changes to the global economy and to global energy infrastructure. The problem is that this is unlikely to be achievable in a short time frame. Implementing the necessary measures to address climate change requires the development of new technologies and infrastructure over a very long time period. This is only possible through sustained efforts to bring about large-scale changes to society. Therefore sustained action is needed to bring about the necessary societal changes to avoid dangerous climate change.

It might also take a long time to implement mitigation measures because of the amount of time needed to negotiate and design a successful mitigation agreement. Designing a successful climate agreement among states is an extremely complicated and challenging task. Bodansky and Diringer argue that, rather than taking the necessary time to develop a cooperative arrangement climate change, the global community has so far tried to implement a cooperative framework for the climate as quickly as possible (Bodansky and Diringer 2007). This has meant that key issues have been left unresolved and have caused problems at later points in time. Barrett and Stavins also criticise the negotiation process of Kyoto Protocol on these grounds, arguing that it sought immediate benefits without taking into account how participation and compliance could be achieved in the long-term (Barrett and Stavins 2003, p. 353). Successful climate mitigation therefore requires a long-term approach on account of the time needed to design a successful agreement. Given these two reasons, it is necessary to implement regulation across a sustained period of time, rather than over a short-term period.

In Chap. 3, I argued that efforts to avoid dangerous climate change require limiting an increase in global temperature to no more than 2 °C above preindustrial levels. I also argued that this requires action that is urgent. In this section, I add to this by arguing that avoiding dangerous climate change also requires action on a near global scale as a matter of effectiveness. That is, in order to stay within the 2 °C limit, action is needed on a very broad, if not global scale. I call this the effectiveness argument for comprehensiveness. This might not entail a fully global approach that incorporates every single actor, but it does require at least a very large proportion of the world’s actors. This, in itself, does not support a fully global approach to addressing climate change. Rather, I provide a full argument for a global approach once I’ve shown that climate change requires global public support, which I undertake in the following section. But turning back, for the moment, to the effectiveness argument for comprehensiveness, there are at least four arguments in support of this view.

The first argument for comprehensiveness follows from the requirement for sustained action that I outlined above. That is, long-term action on climate change requires a comprehensive approach because the state of global geopolitics is not static. This means that many states that are not large emitters now may become large emitters in the future. Any efforts to reduce emissions amongst a limited number of actors today can be undone by the efforts of others in the future. In this respect, taking a short-term view that only considers the current geopolitical situation is likely to be ineffective in the long-term and a successful climate agreement needs to take a long-term approach to climate policy. As a result, implementing action amongst a small group of large emitters will be ineffective if those countries that are low emitters increase emissions in the future.

In fact, it seems likely that many developing countries that have low emissions now will become major emitters in the near future (Hahn 2009, p. 569). This is because, whilst many developing countries have low emissions now, they are expected to undergo rapid economic growth in the next few years. According to the IEA, the bulk of the increase in global energy demand over the next two decades is expected to come from non-OECD countries (IEA 2011). Given the lack of clean energy options for meeting this demand, most of this energy will be supplied from fossil fuel sources. The implication of this is that it is impossible to make significant cuts to global emissions in the long run without the involvement of many of the world’s developing countries.¹²